At the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP for short) conference in October 2010, a bunch of interested people got together around a table to talk about 'Loving Attachment'. The panel was convened by Karen Umemoto and Leonie Sandercock (though unfortunately Leonie couldn't make it to the conference).
To start the discussion, some initial reflections were made on the idea of 'Loving Attachment'. Here are some of the things the panellists were reflecting on:
My work is in two different kinds of cross-cultural research settings: with Indigenous people (as I am a non-Indigenous person) in Australia on questions of land justice, and with marginalised communities of poverty in Glasgow's East End. For me, the idea of 'loving attachment' doesn't sit quite easily, instead I prefer to think of the notion of love in my work as a 'radical politics of love'. This distinction is important to me, because it makes me pay attention to the various ways in which love is not 'only an emotion' but instead an entirely rational and reasonable response and human condition within research relationships. I'm more than a bit inspired by bell hooks' idea that "Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed" (hook 1994, p.243). In other words - for me, critical social theory (paying analytical attention to questions of power, structure, agency etc) go hand in hand with an attitude of love.
We might think usefully in more detail about what this attitude of love entails. Borrowing again from hooks as well as Martha Nussbaum, I wonder if love in planning research might be usefully and analytically conceptualised in a three particular ways - service, compassion and insight. Service is a kind of ethic, an orientation toward caring and relating to each other (not winning the argument). To serve, in planning research, is to acknowledge interests (not necessarily to bow to them) and agendas and to care about how we relate to those interests. Service might humble 'expert' arrogance and begin to expose and therefore potentially undo all of the power relationships bound up in being a 'researcher' and being a person who is 'researched'. Compassion seems to me to be a fundamental pre-requisite for undertaking socially aware and critical research. It says we would want to connect with injustice and suffering at a level not only analytical (we want to connect at that level, too). Compassion invites care about what we do, and about who is involved in what we do. Insight reminds us of the importance of understanding and analysis. We cannot 'only' love but have be self-aware and world-aware as we do so. What we find out in our research endeavours should move us both intellectually, but also move our hearts. Like I say, my inspiration here is from other authors who can talk much more eloquently about this than me - see the work of bell hooks and Martha Nussbaum.
To start the discussion, some initial reflections were made on the idea of 'Loving Attachment'. Here are some of the things the panellists were reflecting on:
My work is in two different kinds of cross-cultural research settings: with Indigenous people (as I am a non-Indigenous person) in Australia on questions of land justice, and with marginalised communities of poverty in Glasgow's East End. For me, the idea of 'loving attachment' doesn't sit quite easily, instead I prefer to think of the notion of love in my work as a 'radical politics of love'. This distinction is important to me, because it makes me pay attention to the various ways in which love is not 'only an emotion' but instead an entirely rational and reasonable response and human condition within research relationships. I'm more than a bit inspired by bell hooks' idea that "Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed" (hook 1994, p.243). In other words - for me, critical social theory (paying analytical attention to questions of power, structure, agency etc) go hand in hand with an attitude of love.
We might think usefully in more detail about what this attitude of love entails. Borrowing again from hooks as well as Martha Nussbaum, I wonder if love in planning research might be usefully and analytically conceptualised in a three particular ways - service, compassion and insight. Service is a kind of ethic, an orientation toward caring and relating to each other (not winning the argument). To serve, in planning research, is to acknowledge interests (not necessarily to bow to them) and agendas and to care about how we relate to those interests. Service might humble 'expert' arrogance and begin to expose and therefore potentially undo all of the power relationships bound up in being a 'researcher' and being a person who is 'researched'. Compassion seems to me to be a fundamental pre-requisite for undertaking socially aware and critical research. It says we would want to connect with injustice and suffering at a level not only analytical (we want to connect at that level, too). Compassion invites care about what we do, and about who is involved in what we do. Insight reminds us of the importance of understanding and analysis. We cannot 'only' love but have be self-aware and world-aware as we do so. What we find out in our research endeavours should move us both intellectually, but also move our hearts. Like I say, my inspiration here is from other authors who can talk much more eloquently about this than me - see the work of bell hooks and Martha Nussbaum.
Libby Porter